Faith and Family
My predecessors once wrote their newspaper columns with pen and paper. Today, I type mine on a keyboard. It may not be long before I simply dictate it aloud and let the computer transcribe it — or perhaps, someday soon, the computer will offer to write it for me.
After all, today’s AI systems have been “trained” on vast collections of Catholic documents: the Catechism, Magisterial teachings, Sacred Scripture, writings of the saints and Church Fathers, and countless theological works. These tools can quote the Bible in nearly any translation, summarize Church teaching and even respond to pastoral questions with remarkable speed and accuracy.
This column, like the ministry it springs from, is not merely about “family” — it is about faith and family. It is shaped by my life as a husband, a father of five and a permanent deacon. It reflects my journey through the joys and struggles of raising children, of growing in prayer and of accompanying others, especially families, couples and young people, on their paths of faith.
A Human Element
Certainly, an AI trained on the internet knows about many aspects of human life. It has read the stories, reactions and reflections of people in all sorts of situations, and it can make surprisingly good suggestions for how to respond to various challenges.
But there is a unique human element that has been present as I have written for the last number of years: the lived experience of raising children, rocking a sick child in the night, the parent’s ache at the first teen with a driver’s license, the jubilation of winning first place or the sorrow of a hospitalized family member and, perhaps more importantly, my relationship with God through it all. As I wrestle with growing kids, I also bring that struggle to my prayer. As I live it, I learn from it, and as I pray about it, I gain insights as well. We can all experience this; it is at the heart of our faith.
An Opportunity to Deepen
I believe the world will never be the same now that AI has been invented and has the growing capacity to “learn” and to interact with us conversationally. Far from being an end for the need for newspaper columns about the intersection of family life and faith, it will provide an opportunity to deepen. Faced with an AI system that can give us access to Catholic theology and Church teaching with a keystroke, we will need to focus on what it cannot provide at the push of a button. We will need to focus on the lived experience, on the sensibility to hear the voice of God and the nudges of providence, which happen regularly for those who earnestly seek the Lord and remain in his grace. Not only does prayer, adoration and the spiritual life provide us with a source of “knowing” different from internet queries but that prayerful experience adapts with our changing ages and stages. God knows us perfectly and knows where we’ve been, where we are and where we are going. His interventions, his consolations, his inspirations are dynamic, personal and deeply fatherly.
Encounter the Father
While the age of AI is many things to many people, I see it as an open door to encounter the Father. As more and more people become enamored with what AI can give us, I believe that people will begin to hunger more and more for what it cannot give us. I actually think that retreat experiences will flourish, that quiet adoration will prosper and that there will be a general interest in spirituality, prayer and the interior life.
AI is impressive. But more impressive still is the One who created the minds that created it. AI can give us facts, but God gives us truth. It’s almost as if AI will give us a taste of knowing, and encountering the Father will help us experience a different and deeper level of knowing and being known.
Finally, I think that interacting with AI will lead people of faith to hunger for deeper interactions with others and God. AI can only provide so many answers and perspectives, but there is a deep, beautiful and colorful connection that we make with even the most ordinary person — each person an unrepeatable miracle of God, full of layers of meaning and identity, purpose and dreams, the ultimate encounter being with God himself. When we reach the end of human knowledge, there is still more, and that more is God who is infinite in his qualities and who never gets boring. He is deep and dynamic and loving. I will leave you with these three quotes from our great saints:
“The soul that loves God always runs toward him, not to reach a stopping point, but to keep going into the infinite depths of his goodness.”
— St. Gregory of Nyssa
“You, eternal Trinity, are a deep sea, into which the more I enter the more I find, and the more I find the more I seek. O abyss, O eternal Godhead, O sea profound, what more could you give me than yourself?”
— St. Catherine of Siena
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
— St. Augustine
